Big Bad Wannabes in literature.
- Visser Four from Animorphs. After a humiliating defeat on the planet Leera, he comes to Earth and attempts to use the Time Matrix to rewrite history in order to make the Yeerk conquest of Earth easier. But he has no real idea what he's doing, bumbling from one historical battle to the next and ultimately gets himself captured by a German/French allied force in a severely altered version of World War II.
- The Shadowmasters, particularly their leader Longshadow, in the middle part of The Black Company series. Though they certainly do a lot of damage, they just don't stack up compared to the Lady, the Dominator, or the Ten Who Were Taken from the first arc, Kina from the later books, or even Soulcatcher, who operates throughout. Longshadow especially proves himself to be an incredibly powerful sorcerer and dangerous opponent, but he's just too erratic and paranoid to put his abilities and resources to their full potential.
- Boone's Lick: Hot-Blooded Jerkass outlaw Jake Miller provides a lot of menace and danger in the early chapters (he has committed several murders and the main male characters join a Posse pursuing him) but is captured and unceremoniously executed well before the halfway mark. His gang members (mostly his brothers, cousins, and in-laws) make no effort to avenge him and actually thank Shay, his brother, and their uncle for helping capture Jake and condemn him to that fate.
- Shift the Ape, from the last The Chronicles of Narnia book The Last Battle, cooks up a cartoonishly silly Paper-Thin Disguise scheme to con his way into assuming Aslan's authority (which actually works), then conspires to take over Narnia with the help of the Calormen Empire. Once the invasion is underway, his authority is quickly subverted by the far more competent and serious Calormen General and is reduced to drinking so much that he gets a hangover and King Tirian feeds Shift to the God of Evil.
- Several examples in Codex Alera, considering the Big Bad Ensemble and Gambit Pileup the series has going on.
- Sarl is probably the most obvious, going from a supporting villain in the second book to the main bad guy in the third and screwing things up a lot before getting undone by his own hubris and inability to control his own followers. High Lord Kalarus does better, effectively holding the title of Big Bad for the middle two books (of six), but he still goes down hard just before the real Big Bad reveals herself.
- A more minor example is Senator Arnos from Book 4, Captain's Fury. He thinks of himself as a brilliant political manipulator in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Invidia Aquiataine. Invidia thinks of him as a pawn to be disposed of once he's outlived his usefulness.
- Conan the Barbarian:
- Jehungir Agha in "The Devil in Iron" is a Downplayed example. He is a powerful Turanian nobleman trying to eliminate Conan on behalf of the Greater-Scope Villain Yezdigerd, but is rendered a secondary threat in the story by the Humanoid Abomination Khosatrel Khel, who slaughters the men Agha brought with him to hunt Conan. However, Agha himself survives Khosatrel's onslaught, and is slain in a duel with Conan moments before Khosatrel's own demise.
- "The People of the Black Circle" has Khemsa, a sorcerer who served under the Black Seers of Yimsha until his lover Gitara convinced him to betray them and set off to become a Sorcerous Overlord, a quest that ends in him and Gitara being killed by the Black Seers, albeit not without him putting up a fight.
- "Red Nails" has Olmec, one of the leaders of the Techultli, who recruits Conan and Valeria to help him eliminate his enemies before attempting to have Conan murdered so he can keep Valeria for himself. However, it is revealed that Olmec is magically enslaved to his female companion, the sorceress Tascela. When Olmec and Tascela argue over Valeria, she magically forces Olmec to swallow a drink which temporarily paralyzes him, and places him in a Death Trap.
- "The Phoenix on the Sword" has Baron Dion, an Aquilonian nobleman who seeks to supplant Conan as the King of Aquilonia, recruiting Gromel, Volmana, and Rinaldo to his cause, and enlisting the aid of the outlaw leader Ascalante. However, the only reason Dion's coup has a chance of succeeding is because of Ascalante, who plans on betraying Dion once Conan is out of the picture, is doing the planning. Dion himself is an Upper-Class Twit who gets himself killed by an enslaved Thoth-Amon by showing him a ring and mentioning that he got it from a thief who allegedly stole it from a sorcerer, immediately after Thoth-Amon described to him how he used to be a sorcerer until a thief stole his Ring of Power.
- "The Scarlet Citadel" has Prince Arpello, who was installed in Aquilonia as a Puppet King for Strabonus of Koth, who himself is a Puppet King for Tsotha-lanti. However, Conan predicts that Arpello will attempt to cut his strings, which would fail due to a lack of support, and only result in Koth annexing Aquilonia outright. However, Arpello doesn't even last long enough to confirm whether or not Conan's prediction would come true, as Conan himself returns to Aquilonia and easily dispatches Arpello to reclaim his throne.
- The Hour of the Dragon:
- Tarascus, Valerius, and Amalric are a group of noblemen who resurrect the Evil Sorcerer Xaltotun to assist in their ambitions, enabling Tarascus to become the King of Nemedia and Valerius usurping Conan as the King of Aquilonia, while Amalric's wealth and influence makes him more powerful than even them. All three, however, and eclipsed as a threat by Xaltotun, who declares his intention to become the Sorcerous Overlord of the Western lands while the others serve as his satraps, which Tarascus, Valerius, and Amalric are in no position to dispute.
- Thutothmes is a Stygian priest with aspirations of becoming a Sorcerous Overlord, only to be slaughtered by Valerius' henchmen.
- Cradle Series: One of the themes of the series is the protagonists always moving forward, while villains tend to just claim their little fiefdoms of power, so this shows up pretty often.
- Jai Daishou is one of only twelve Underlords in the Blackflame Empire, and is rather highly ranked on that list. Eithan is not high ranked, so Jai Daishou dismissively refers to him as "Eleven" and constantly undermines him for daring to rise above his station. And then he catches Eithan in an inescapable trap and discovers that Eithan is much, much more powerful than he pretends, and pretty much the only reason he has survived as long as he has is because Eithan doesn't use murder as a first solution. While he survives their fight, it becomes clear that Eithan simply doesn't see him as a threat, and is using him and his attentions to pressure Lindon into improving.
- The Monarch Reigan Shen murdered Eithan's Monarch, Tiberian Arelius, and destroyed Eithan's homeland. Everyone assumes that he is Eithan's Arch-Enemy, but Eithan dismisses him as just another obstacle. When the time comes for a final fight, Eithan cheerily leaves the duty to Lindon because he thinks he'll learn more from the experience.
- And of course everyone on Cradle comes to nothing before the enemies in the world beyond. The Abidan have to deal with the Vroshir, world-killing bandits who kidnap people by the millions. At the top of the list is the Mad King, who makes Iterations quake merely by existing. When he arrives in Cradle, everyone in the world—especially all the antagonists—realizes how completely outmatched they are.
- In The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, Director Darius's grand revenge in The Frost King's Treasure
falls apart because he didn't think far enough ahead to think of a way to dispatch his assembled enemies once he had "lured them to exactly where [he] wants them". Consequently, things go about as well for him as you'd expect them to go for a normal person who has gotten himself surrounded by all his worst enemies and spent half an hour gloating about how much he wants to murder them. - Kleitus of The Death Gate Cycle. A competent and ambitious Evil Overlord and Chessmaster in life who only became worse after getting turned into a lazar and deciding that killing every living person on the four worlds and ruling over an empire of the undead sounded like a great idea, he's an extremely nasty piece of work whose nature makes him virtually indestructible. Unfortunately for Kleitus, he hits a terrible run of bad luck, including having many of his followers poached by another lazar who turned out to be a Messianic Archetype, getting defeated and forced into a subordinate role by another Evil Overlord, and then getting destroyed before his scheme to manipulate said overlord into finding an immensely powerful Amplifier Artifact Kleitus intended to hijack bore fruit. For all his big plans, he never succeeded in extending his influence beyond his homeworld of Abarrach and into the wider multiverse, while bigger villains took up the slack.
- In the Discworld book Interesting Times, Lord Hong really, really wants to be even bigger and badder than those wonders of the West — Lord Vetinari, in particular, who's been shown to be less of a villain and more of a Reasonable Authority Figure. Hong even puts up a fairly good showing in the grand game against the other families. But in the end, it's impossible for him to cope with such things as actual chaos (and a group of heroes who have narrative causality on their side), especially since his whole life has been strictly regimented.
- Doctor Who New Adventures: In a story arc spanning from Blood Heat to No Future, the Meddling Monk runs an elaborate scheme to get revenge on the the Doctor by altering history, but this simply creates an alternate universe where the Doctor died, rather than killing the Doctor in his own past, and while the Monk claims that his later plans were always intended to just distract the Doctor from his main scheme, he is finally tricked and defeated by the Doctor's companion Ace.
- There's a comedic example in 'Darth Wannabe' from the Dresden Files short story Day Off. A van painted with inverted crosses and other such symbols show up in front of Harry's house, and the people inside tell Harry that he's earned their wrath by getting rid of a curse they'd put on an old lady. Harry is surprised that there was a curse at all — it was so weak that he didn't even notice it, and just did the exorcism to make her feel better. He then pulls a gun on them. They scatter pretty quickly.
- Annias in The Elenium is a Smug Snake who's out to become Archprelate (think Pope) through whatever means are necessary. For the first two books, he is played as a dangerous if overconfident adversary. Then in Book 3, it all falls apart on him, he's forced to flee for his life to the God of Evil he made a deal with, and his Dragon-in-Chief, Martel reveals that he is the real brains of the operation. It's all downhill from there for Annias.
- Fate/Zero: Tokiomi Tohsaka is, on paper, by far the strongest competitor in the Fourth Holy Grail War. He's a clever and talented mage, is quite rich with access to many resources, both the "neutral" church overseers and another Master, Kirei Kotomine, are secretly working with him, his Servant Archer / Gilgamesh is one of the strongest Servants period, and he has a solid plan to sit back in his well-fortified mansion until the other competitors are weakened. Thing is, despite all his advantages, Tokiomi completely misses that Archer and Kirei are not at all impressed with his passive strategy, or that the two get along much better with each other than with him. He's so overconfident that all his plans will work out that he never double-checks anything, such as the possibility that his closest allies aren't particularly loyal. Tokiomi winds up literally backstabbed by Kirei, using a knife that Tokiomi gave to him no less, dying without really realizing what happened.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights gives us this version of William Afton, a contrast to his other versions. While the other two versions are the most dangerous and heinous villains in their respective timelines, it turns out that this version is barely clinging onto life and the sole reason that he succeeded in creating his Amalgamation is because a much stronger evil was helping him.
- Harry Potter series:
- For the first five books, Draco Malfoy acts like a pro-Voldemort fanboy Sitcom Arch-Nemesis to Harry, more of an annoyance than a threat. Then, when Half-Blood Prince comes along, he starts actively working for Voldemort and his Death Eaters. But when he tries coming up with plans to aid them, said plans end up failing simply because he's really not able to keep up the level of evil required of him, and because of his stupidity. His mother was in fact terrified of him joining up because she knew he'd be in way over his head, while Dumbledore infers that Voldemort only let Draco join the Death Eaters to punish Draco's father's failures. Speaking of which...
- Draco's dad, Lucius, is a very smooth operator, and there's nothing he won't stoop to in order to cement his family's influence; and in his first few appearances he's treated as someone very dangerous. But when Voldemort is resurrected, Lucius is truly revealed for the comparatively less threatening Smug Snake he is in comparison to his revived boss. By Deathly Hallows, he's almost a complete nonentity.
- The Holy Therns in John Carter of Mars envision themselves as the true masters of Barsoom, behind the Path of Inspiration that draws all Martians towards their kingdom in search of paradise so they can enslave and have spread their influence over all major nations. Turns out they have been in turn deceived by the First-Born, their long-time enemies (no less) who frequently abduct their females, carrying them off to a Fate Worse than Death. The First-Born queen is revealed to be the same deity that the Therns worship, and she used them as puppets to carry out her will for millennia.
- Both the Harrow and Roger Covenant from The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Since the real Big Bad, Lord Foul, is a superintelligent Physical God of Evil, most villains look like wannabes next to him.
- Gwilanna from The Last Dragon Chronicles, sometimes, that woman is just desperate to foil one of the good guys.
- Saruman from The Lord of the Rings is, by all means, a dangerous villain, and even planned to supplant Sauron as Big Bad by getting his hands on the Ring himself. However, it soon becomes clear that compared to Sauron he is only a Smug Snake pretender. He attacks Rohan with his entire army leaving Isengard undefended, and even then his army fails to effectively curb stomp Rohan while underestimating the neighboring Ents. On the other hand, Sauron effectively pins down Gondor with an advance force that is a fraction of his military might and is only defeated with help from a 3,000 year old forgotten ghost army and is implied to have driven out or annihilated the neighboring Entwives during the previous era when he was more powerful. Even their removal from Middle-Earth demonstrates this; Saruman leaves Middle-Earth as a mere man who was murdered after being robbed of his staff and magic by being stabbed in the back with his figure gazing towards the West but being denied and blown away to nothingness, while Sauron is the most powerful entity in Middle-Earth when the One Ring is destroyed at the end of a long and grueling quest and leaves Middle-Earth as a giant menacing black shadow that covers Mordor and the Free People for the last time.
- It's very heavily implied, as well, that Saruman's development mirrors that of Sauron. Both are Fallen Heroes, noted for their great power and skill at creation. Both joined the evil side because they were too enamored of their own capabilities and perceived superiority over others and because of their obsession for enforcing their idea of order but quickly suffered Motive Decay. Both ended up squandering almost all their power, and by the time of their deaths, they were far reduced from their original stature. The difference is that Sauron went through all this over the course of millennia; Saruman made it only a few decades.
- Shamoke from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A bit of a subversion, since the novel treats him as working under Shu, the good guys. He manages to kill a weakened Gan Ning with a shot to the head, but after Shu falls for a fire attack in a later confrontation, Shamoke retreats and is then killed by Wu general Zhou Tai.
- In The Russian adaptation of "The Shadow" by E. Schwartz, the titular Living Shadow is this. After successfully becoming king, he gets played around by his ministers and then dethroned.
- Maridon in Salamander manipulates Coelus into making him the subject of the Cascade ritual in order to seize power, and then later attempts to assassinate Ellen. The first time the ritual is performed, it goes lethally wrong and he gets replaced as Big Bad by Prince Kieron and Lord Iolen. Amusingly, Maridon gets Coelus to give him ultimate power by telling Coelus that he, Maridon, is more expendable than Coelus is in the event that the Cascade goes wrong.
- Skulduggery Pleasant has Vaurien Scapegrace, who gave himself the title 'The Killer Supreme' despite never having killed anyone, and gets beaten up by a teenage girl multiple times in a short period of three books. He does eventually kill someone after being turned into a Zombie and ordered to do so by a Necromancer.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Viserys Targaryen is a narcissistic and self-entitled bastard who regards himself as the true heir to the Iron Throne, even though he has been spending most of his life as a Beggar King. Even after he sells his sister to a Barbarian Tribe in exchange for their military help, he continuously insults their way of life and still thinks that he has the right to abuse and control Daenerys however he likes (fortunately, she learns to fight back). When he realizes that Daenerys has love, adoration, and loyalty from the Dothraki while he has nothing, he drunkenly threatens to kill her in front of her husband. Her husband, Drogo, the Khal of the Dothraki. He doesn't live long after that.
- Cersei Lannister, who indeed has a couple of neat ideas here and there, yet once she gets on the throne... she manages to surprise Petyr Baelish with how quickly she runs the kingdom into the ground. He points out that in the Game of Thrones she imagines herself a player, but is in reality merely another piece; because, even as the most politically powerful person in Westeros, she is just so damned predictable.
- Cersei's son, Joffrey, would love to be the main villain of the story, but is handicapped by his own stupidity and the presence of both Tyrion and Tywin, who both work to constrain his worst impulses. Anybody who Joffrey does get his entitled hands on, however, is in for a very bad time of it.
- The Greyjoys and the rest of the Ironborn start out as this under Balon Greyjoy during the first phase of the War of the Five Kings and are almost universally seen as nuisances and annoying upstarts. Euron Greyjoy's killing of his brother and coronation as the new king of the Iron Islands turns them into a genuine threat, due to Euron's strategic acumen, possible affinity for magic, monstrous nature and apocalyptic ambitions.
- In truth, however, everyone in Westeros who fancies themselves to be among the most powerful of players (or soon to be) is a Big Bad Wannabe. It doesn't matter if they're dangerous fools like the above, traitorous lords without any moral compass whatsoever or even the best players of the game of thrones with massive intelligence networks and trained minions to do their bidding. Because, in the end, Winter is Coming... and with it comes magic and the Others. Ain't nobody prepared for this.
- Star Wars Legends: The young readers novella series The Glove of Darth Vader has Trioculous, the nominal new leader of the Empire, who views himself as a worthy successor to Palpatine. In fact, he's an incompetent buffoon with no tactical thinking and being prone to childish angry outbursts, and is ultimately just a figurehead being propped up by Grand Moff Hissa. And Hissa, while more dangerous than Trioculous, is himself an Unwitting Pawn of Supreme Prophet Kadann, who is using Hissa and Trioculous to advance his own agenda.
- The Stormlight Archive:
- Similarly to the above, we have Highprince Sadeas. While he does drive much of the conflict in the early books, he ultimately pales in threat to Odium and his Voidbringers. In fact, the primary reason Dalinar and co. have for opposing him is because his attempts to usurp the kingdom are getting in the way of preparing to fight Odium. His ultimate fate is to be unceremoniously stabbed by Adolin after finally pushing the boy too far, and is promptly forgotten about as the everyone gets ready for the Desolation.
- The Sons of Honor are a secret conspiracy that claims many of the most powerful people in the world among their number, and are manipulating events to cause the next Desolation under the belief that this will bring the Heralds back, who will then catapult the church back into prominence and fix everything wrong with the world. It slowly becomes clear that they are much less of a threat than they believe themselves to be; just to start with, they are completely unaware that the Heralds never actually left, several of their most powerful members are just using the organization for their own ends, and what few secrets of the world they discover they promptly misinterpret to fit their dogma. In fact, they were founded by a Herald who of course knew full well from the start that their entire goal was worthless. When the Desolation does come, they believe this proves that they were right all along, but really it had nothing to do with them. In the fourth book Shallan crushes the remnants of their organization in the first few chapters with only slightly more effort than organizing the janitor staff.
- The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: The Ilse Witch is without a doubt a dangerous young woman and is no one to be crossed lightly. Yet as The Morgawr's former Dragon, she is forever the junior partner in their relationship, a fact that she resents enormously, as she believes herself to be his equal in power and skill. The Morgawr and his current Dragon, Cree Bega, see the situation rather differently, regarding the witch as little more than a dangerous tool, to be used and discarded as they see fit, and the bad news for her is, their view of things is more or less accurate. Soon after arriving at Castledown the Ilse Witch is sidelined as The Heavy by Antrax, and then by The Morgawr himself. Powerful and clever she may be, but she's just not evil enough to play at his and Cree Bega's level.
- Sol of Warrior Cats: Power of Three, who takes over ShadowClan, but then is easily defeated by Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf.
- Several examples in The Wheel of Time, with Sammael (who badly overplayed his hand), Elaida (who was just never as awesome as she thought she was) and Padan Fain (who by that point likely could have replaced the Dark One as Big Bad if he hadn't run straight into the one guy completely immune to his power) being the three most notable.
- Admiral Omega in Winged Hussars is a famed commander from a rarely seen species that practically invented the modern Space Navy, who wrote many of the tactical manuals that nearly every navy uses. He's introduced commanding a fleet raised from several alien mercenary companies hired to lure in and destroy the Winged Hussars' Task Force Two. Faced with four-to-one odds in numbers alone, the Hussars ignore the manual and kill him by attaching engines and sensor spoofing to asteroids and slamming them into his fleet's vanguard at a measurable fraction of the speed of light, then fight their way past the other ships in the confusion. Afterwards, it's revealed in the narration that Omega's reputation is built on lies: he's an Armchair Military admiral who learned everything secondhand and had never actually fought a battle before.
